By the way, about apple's pricing... don't be noobs, buy within 60 days of a revision. And remember RAM is easily user-serviceable.

Noobs? Really?

It isn't soley about Ram, but all the components. Of course I'm not trying to knock on Mac, this is going to fall into more low budget building and gaming. I can take a little over $700 and build a whole new tower (with the exception of saving the things that wouldn't need to be replaced like the DVD drives, media card reader, keyboard, mouse, monitor, and hard drives) and after a reformat, it's a brand new computer. That's much greater than just Ram.

Also, what happens if you get a Mac within 60 days of a revision (and is that operating system revision)?

IllegalPaladin said: Noobs? Really? It isn't soley about Ram, but all the components (for your games and such). Also, what happens if you get a Mac within 60 days of a revision (and is that operating system revision)?

 

Apple computers are competitively priced at the time they put a new revision on sale (there's been comparisons, you can check Tom's Hardware for example, mac pro vs cheapest newegg components). However unlike other companies out there, they don't revise their prices downward as time goes on. If you buy right after a revision you aren't overpaying for what's inside the box.

The ram: apple literally will gouge you for ram upgrades. Luckily for you and me, all their computers (except the mini, if I recall properly) can easily be serviced. Order with stock ram, then upgrade yourself.

As long as you follow these two guidelines, you won't be paying a premium for an apple computer. By the way, Apple is a couple weeks from a laptop upgrade so I'd suggest you hold until then if you were thinking about buying a macbook/macbook pro.

It used to be a problem back when they were on the esoteric powerpc roadmap but now that they are using intel it's easy to predict their revision cycles.

I use and am comfortable with Macs, but apart from work where the Macs will be running Adobe and Final Cut software, I find it somewhat difficult to be interested owning a Mac when I use my PC for everything I already do, games included.

Though it seems when you try to wait out until you get information about a revision is kind of similar to when I look for the best deals and such for hardware.

IllegalPaladin said: I use and am comfortable with Macs, but apart from work where the Macs will be running Adobe and Final Cut software, I find it somewhat difficult to be interested grabbing a Mac. Though it seems when you try to wait out until you get information about a revision is kind of similar to when I look for the best deals and such for hardware.

 

Sure =) I find Mac OS X much better than Windows, but everyone has it's own taste. Just letting you know that owning an apple computer doesn't necessarily mean paying a luxury premium as some people like to pretend, as long as you know how things work.

Mac OS X has all the disadvantages of not being Windows (doesn't run most games, for example) but few of the advantages of Linux (doesn't have a packaging system, not free, hardware tie-in, lack of good Java support, forced to use Objective-C, lack of kernel flexibility, lack of hardware support vs. Linux).

Soleron said: Mac OS X has all the disadvantages of not being Windows (doesn't run most games, for example) but few of the advantages of Linux (doesn't have a packaging system, not free, hardware tie-in, lack of good Java support, forced to use Objective-C, lack of kernel flexibility, lack of hardware support vs. Linux).

 

Hey, if it isn't mr. ubuntu-avatar weighting in on OS talk. Aren't your betas frying hardware these days?

Bitmap Frogs said: Soleron said: Mac OS X has all the disadvantages of not being Windows (doesn't run most games, for example) but few of the advantages of Linux (doesn't have a packaging system, not free, hardware tie-in, lack of good Java support, forced to use Objective-C, lack of kernel flexibility, lack of hardware support vs. Linux).   Hey, if it isn't mr. ubuntu-avatar weighting in on OS talk. Aren't your betas frying hardware these days?

My points ARE valid criticism of the Mac, which is permitted. You are referring to a single incident out of the millions of lines of code that make up a Linux distribution, which was fixed rapidly before being put on any production systems and affected one driver for a little-used piece of hardware. Remember that a bug in "Linux" like that would be equivalent to a bug in ANY driver on a Windows system, since on Windows drivers are made by hardware developers and released separately, whereas on Linux all drivers are included with the kernel. I imagine that at least one Windows driver in the entire history of Windows has damaged a piece of hardware, right? The difference between buggy Linux development versions and buggy Windows development versions is that you don't even have ACCESS to pre-release builds.

^^ MacOSX vs Ubuntu. Kinda like Marvel vs Capcom?

When a Mac user complains about Windows, a lot people do see the faults of Windows because almost everyone have had contact with it. However, when Mac users praise the Mac at the expense of Windows, Windows users can't confirm nor deny it because they haven't operated a Mac before. So the Mac has some sort of mystique attached to it.

Soleron said: Bitmap Frogs said: Soleron said: Mac OS X has all the disadvantages of not being Windows (doesn't run most games, for example) but few of the advantages of Linux (doesn't have a packaging system, not free, hardware tie-in, lack of good Java support, forced to use Objective-C, lack of kernel flexibility, lack of hardware support vs. Linux).   Hey, if it isn't mr. ubuntu-avatar weighting in on OS talk. Aren't your betas frying hardware these days?   My points ARE valid criticism of the Mac, which is permitted. You are referring to a single incident out of the millions of lines of code that make up a Linux distribution, which was fixed rapidly before being put on any production systems and affected one driver for a little-used piece of hardware. Remember that a bug in "Linux" like that would be equivalent to a bug in ANY driver on a Windows system, since on Windows drivers are made by hardware developers and released separately, whereas on Linux all drivers are included with the kernel. I imagine that at least one Windows driver in the entire history of Windows has damaged a piece of hardware, right? The difference between buggy Linux development versions and buggy Windows development versions is that you don't even have ACCESS to pre-release builds.

 

Yep, that's what happens with open-source, user-tested software - buggy software available to everybody and computers get fried. Unlike beta-testers backed by corporations, the final users that got their laptop BBQ'd by ubuntu won't get a refund.